Sun Zhu was right…

The following post is making the rounds…

“Help make history, Boycott Inauguration Day, by turning your TV off at 12 o’clock ET on January 20. Make this inauguration the least-watched live event in the history of television. What an incredible message to the new administration. And for someone who loves to talk about crowd size, this is not going to make him very happy. It will put him on notice That we, the people, also have power! What a wonderful way to make Martin Luther King proud with an old-school approach to change. So tell your friends and tell your friends to tell their friends. Don’t presume people are not going to watch let’s make sure everyone doesn’t. Turn the TV to PBS so all the civil rights documentaries will get the ratings.”

My response is, what absolute poppycock.

In the days of Neilsen ratings, when that was all that was available, measuring a TV audience was the prime way to gauge a media event. That was then. It’s not today.

This week’s Trump inauguration will be available to a global audience on television, cable, audio, social media, and countless internet streams. It is potentially going to be the most watched inauguration simply in terms of its distribution and availability.
The TV numbers will be a pittance.

So – you don’t want to watch? Good on you.

Good luck to you.

And PBS should be so lucky to see a surge in their ratings.

Does anyone think that the sycophants who surround this president would ever be so bold as to tell that narcissist about a campaign to boycott his remarks?

Take it a second step, if told, would he care? How would we know?

On a larger plane, I find it risible to think the next 4 years will be better tolerated by being an ostrich. For anyone who disagreed with the President-elect or voted for his opposition, I might offer, “Get over it.”

Mr. Trump won, perhaps not with the mandate he has claimed, but with sufficient numbers in the popular vote and with a Congress prepped to do his bidding.

Is the answer not to watch, listen, or react to them too? For 4 years?

As for the line, “What a wonderful way to make Martin Luther King proud with an old-school approach to change” the perpetrator of this campaign forgets that Dr. King was all about publicity for the cause of racial justice. And more, he was a fighter… lest you forget the arrests, injuries, and deaths suffered by those who chose to stand by him. “Old-school approach…” seems like looking at history through a colored lens that has been distorted by memories of a gentler day.

These days are not gentle, dear reader.

If one disagrees with policies or positions, it’s far braver to speak up than to remain mute. If you think the country is on the wrong path, then speak up and be heard.
Sun Zhu tells us the path to victory begins with ourselves.“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

“Stupid Is As Stupid Does” – A Modest Proposal to Everyone Hell Bent on Punishing California

While facts (real or alternative) rarely seem to matter either to Trump or the GOP… maybe their proposal to punish California for its flagrant disregard of sound forest management is ripe for implementation.

Or maybe just ripe? Why do so many GOP legislators in Washington want to punish Californians in exchange for any mercy or money?

{Let’s remember that according to AI, the Federal government owns 56-70% of California’s forest lands. Private ownership accounts for 40%, leaving the state responsible for just 3%.}

It is high time for a little responsible forest money management.

Starting immediately…

To hell with California’s smelts. Screw the waterfowl. Damn dams are inconvenient, and besides a good dam break and resulting flood is good to clear out slums in decrepit, declining, sanctuary-declared, leftist democrat-led cities and towns. California – the world’s 5th largest economy – needs to get a fiscal haircut and stern reprimand.

Nationally too, there has been too much waste… proverbial pork… bridges to nowhere…

From now on, there will be no federal aid for hurricane relief in the Gulf States. No hurricane is a surprise… many are charted with Sharpies, so we all know where in advance they will strike.

Lava flows in Hawaii? Ha! Eruptions can be largely predicted and lava moves slowly. If someone cannot get out of the way, it’s their fault.

Earthquakes too… a little rattle and roll is good for enhancing your rhythm.

As far as Tornado Alley is concerned, a good readjustment of topsoil is good for everyone. While the Dust Bowl is an ancient memory, moving a chunk of Kansas to Illinois seems reasonable, and less expensive than by truck or rail cars.

Nor’easters in New England? Not a worry. Just think of lobsters clawing their way as they relocate to higher ground in Penobscot Bay. They have 10 legs. Use them. No transportation subsidies for them.

Certainly, we have to stop reimbursing Springfield, Ohio residents for the loss of their pets; even if they were delicious.

Isn’t chicken the new white meat anyway… or was that more pork?

And let’s not forget about Alaska… high time to stop spending money on binoculars for a better glimpse of Russia from our windows.

Montana? Sorry… no money for you for errant Chinese spy balloons falling from the sky, even if that carnage might cause the buffalo to stampede. Bison meat… certainly exportable to global markets without government trade sanctions is good too.

And farm subsidies are a thing of the past.

And pork… government pork? Nope… it’s your bacon in the fire from now on.

FEMA? Cast off into the dustbin of history.

I think it is wonderful that Congress is finally stepping up to put some much-needed and long-overdue fiscal controls on flagrant emergency spending to help American citizens.
It’s high time to put a stop to this financial drip, a leakage that is undermining the inherent strengths of the states and allowing good Americans to rely on handouts in emergencies, even when all else has been lost.

The wildfires in LA are the proverbial (flammable) straw that broke the camel’s back.

And we should punish nature too when Mom doesn’t provide enough rain.
Let’s cloud-seed the skies… until the heavens burst, and who cares about flooding in Missouri, Iowa, or along the Mississippi?

The reappearance of, “Stupid is as Stupid Does” reportedly dates to 1862
Anthony Trollop used it in 1882.
Forrest Gump popularized it in 1994.
Thank goodness Congress has restored it to our lexicon by its actions in 2025.

Why don’t the American media and Op-ed writers see this as clearly as I do?

Jonathan Swift surely would approve of all this.

A Natural Crisis Becomes a Political Firestorm & Media Crisis

We’re watching a natural disaster become a media crisis develop in real time before our eyes.

From the LA Mayor… we’re being treated to a master class in missed opportunities… Stone-Cold silence… A failure to show empathy…

The list goes on… and on

https://nypost.com/2025/01/08/us-news/stone-faced-la-mayor-karen-bass-refuses-to-answer-questions-about-absence-as-wildfires-rage-across-her-city/

Here’s tip #1 – In the face of any crisis, be human.

2 – Pretend to care. Mourn the dead. Reach out to the injured.

3 – Offer reassurance that we’re all in this together and will pull through, again, together.

4 – Thank first responders. Once, twice, and again for their bravery and skill.

5 – Make it abundantly clear, “I’m on my way – I’m absolutely in communication – I am in this fight with you.”

6 – Demand all local, state and federal resources, open checkbooks and manpower by made available immediately. Set a timetable… A clue? Like as soon as yesterday.

7 – Don’t stare down a microphone. It’s not the enemy. Embrace every opportunity to speak (not talk at) with your constituents. The microphone is your bestie…

8 – Repeat: be human. Show empathy. Be authentic. Be a friend.

You’d think the LA Mayor’s Office would be media savvy.
From some of the early evidence to date, you appear to be mistaken.

And your mother wears combat boots!!

Nah-Nah-Nah

Are Lofty Thoughts Lost in American Politics, and Beyond?

This NYTimes story presents an interesting and disconcerting story that past Presidents have been better orators than those to whom we have become accustomed in recent administrations.

Compared to what has become a standard diet of bravado, braggadocio, self-serving “I told you so” and outright propaganda, not to mention tens of thousands of falsifications, the old days seem pretty darn different.

This chasm of lost oratory prompted me to think: who and what’s responsible for the dearth of great communicators?

Can we attribute this to speech writers and consultants who master-manage and maul every message?  What about the corruption of money? Do politicians and executives fear that saying anything of substance will cause a break in the money chain or stock market?
What about religious leaders and influencers? Are they still believable, as so few seem to hold much sway anyway?
Or, is over-exposure by the media that which diminishes (even extinguishes) everyone’s light before it can gain more than a glimmer?
Have we lost the art of speaking and persuasion in place of 280-character social media posts?
Are we impatient, turning off after less than: 30 because we are too busy to press on to our next conversation or encounter?

What seems missing most to me is honesty and authenticity.
In multimedia, in the past and still today, to become trusted and believable, one must start with being liked. People judge one another in nanoseconds, making quick, knee-jerk judgments based on appearance, intonation, articulation, and whether they feel the speaker actually believes what they’re saying.

Does your audience like you? What is even likable about you?

In speaking, achieving success and impact is as simple as using clear words, being concise, and sounding conversational.

Too many of my students struggled to find a more complicated word in the thesaurus to sound authoritative at the expense of being understandable. They complicated a simple message by searching for bigger, polysyllabic words in a futile hope of sounding impressive.

In short, they thought too much and didn’t write as they most naturally spoke.

I taught writing for 15+ years. So many students struggled due to years of teachers who valued volume instead of quality. So many students struggled to write what they wanted to say for fear of criticism when all they had to do was write as they spoke and speak from the heart.

Great writing is the product of a good first draft, terrific editing, a better second draft, and repeat.

Great speaking can and should motivate and inspire — but it isn’t just about big words but the speaker’s use of all their inherent, personal strengths – and their belief in what they have to communicate.

The Times story is interesting as it highlights what we have lost.

Good God! Can the Democrats Be Any Less Inspiring In Their Selection of Party Leadership?

Bland. Milk toast. Banal. White bread. Safe – in an era which demands thoughtful, novel and strong leadership shouldn’t there be another option?

The two front-runners for leadership of the Democratic National Committee seem to be two sides of the same-old, hackneyed coin which was battered and bruised in the November 24 election… a tarnished token which shows little spark, energy or life since.

Quoting Sunday’s 12.5.25 NYTimes, “The two candidates who have emerged as front-runners to become D.N.C. chair, Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, are both middle-aged white men from the upper Midwest and chair of their state parties whose politics are well within the Democratic mainstream.”

I’m sorry, was that a typo? Didn’t they mean to write mausoleum?

My concern has nothing to do with DEI or political correctness. Still, rather, I am just surprised that the party is choosing to act more like an ostrich in defeat than a righteous, rigorous contestant who wants another crack at the champ who just flattened them at the ballot box. (If you’ll forgive the tortured mixed metaphors).

Washington beltway wags often speak of the best and the brightest minds populating the halls of power. (Of course, look where that got us in the Vietnam era). But I do wonder if this is really the best to be mustered for what is surely among the most difficult and seemingly unattractive jobs in DC?

All I can hear echoing is “4 More Years” – a disconcerting call considering the disarray in the Democratic Party hierarchy and populace.

Or maybe I am just a ~~realist~~ pessimist?

Media Coverage of Political Regimes: A Study on Vietnam and Syria

Watching the news…
I see parallels between the fall of South Vietnam in the spring 1975 and the equally stunning collapse of the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad within the last fortnight.
I see similarities in political regimes rotted by corruption and propped up by foreign powers motivated by their own fears, ideologies and self-interests.
I see decades long totalitarianism – over a half century for Syria – and 30 years of foreign colonialism in Indochina post WW2 – finally unraveling as their once vaunted armies abandon their posts and tear away their uniforms to obscure their identities.
I see an apparent collapse of the intelligence organization, or its willingness to deceive its minders.
I see jails being liberated of political prisoners and senses of joy and relief by a populace which feels it is finally free to embrace the future.

One difference… the global press corps has done a responsible job of years-long critical coverage of the Assad regime… I don’t remember an American press corps equally critical of its South Vietnamese puppets culminating with the fall of “Big Minh” (Dương Văn Minh)

(And yes… there are parallels too between the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan under President Ashraf Ghani and reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate… among other world conflicts…)

It proves the stink and the plague of corruption at the core will rightly, inevitably be unsustainable. But we should not be shocked… tho we should feel profound sadness for the pain and suffering endured by its citizens, the ultimate victims.

What I find tragic is the American press corp has largely abandoned its foreign posts decried for being economically unsustainable and for management’s assessment that US isolationism doesn’t warrant the time, space or expense of offering a diet of global news. We are too ignorant, in some cases like ostriches choosing the bury our heads, lest we confront realities which are too unpleasant for conversation or action that loom in our path.

Is there anything on our horizon which augurs change?

A Stark Reminder that all Social Media is NOT Journalism

A strain of social media appears to be legitimizing the NY insurance CEO’s assassin as a hero; he’s a Don Quixote character striking a revenge-blow against the establishment of big insurance.

But… free speech is great, of course, but do we now turn or subscribe to social media to affirm – as judge and jury – what price should be paid for a company’s conduct?

Is this legitimate media? Is this even civilized discourse?
Is assassination in the street a new form of justice that should be considered, much less praised?

Social media has a value, but some of these posts more closely resemble the revenge-seeking, blood-thirsty crowd at the Roman coliseum signaling their cavalier preference for some one else’s life with a thumbs down.

When is enough babbling enough? I don’t see this as a blow to the insurance titans that will in some way compel them to review their policies to be more human. Is a slaughter in the streets in any way a more human approach to life…

This company might be horrible.. their leadership culture avaricious… but can you legitimately ascribe a multitude of business decisions to just one man?

I’d remind these new media writers who seek to be opinion leaders to also consider that he was a husband, a father… he didn’t deserve to die like a dog in the gutter.
How can any one accept this as legitimate media and not just decry it as malicious and unworthy gossip? At what point… do we decide that garnering clicks for saying outrageous things are just wrong?

The Missing Story: Maybe the fact is – if there is a nuclear attack, there may be nothing the public can do to save itself. Maybe that’s the story no one wants to really look at.

The most alarming picture Sunday from Hawaii experiencing an incoming ballistic missile wasn’t the highway billboards or chyron crawl over a sport program on local TV, but rather the panic in the streets. People were running for their lives, hiding in bathrooms or closets, and saying “good byes” to their families. Why or where were they running, or simply – in a nuclear attack – would it have mattered?

And why isn’t that the most prominent question for Day 2 of this story?

While the cause of Sunday’s false missile alarm in Hawaii needs to be investigated, even more shocking is the fact that no one seems to have known what to do, where to go, or how to react.

And that confusion and panic is frighteningly still unaddressed in news coverage.

It is knee-jerk to point fingers and decry the accident. And goodness knows there are been countless ‘national security consultants’ who have flooded the airwaves wringing their hands offering arm chair speculation about the accident safely from Washington, a distance of 4,826 miles from Honolulu. But their emotionally delivered insight hasn’t shed any light on the larger question… in this day and age of ever-larger nuclear buttons on desktops, what is left for the rest of us to actually do?

Many in the news business will recall the hackneyed phrase oft-spoken when there is a screw up on air, “Broadcasting will stop while we assess the damage and assign the blame.”
Today we are witnessing the mea culpa, the governor taking responsibility, the President assuring us “we’re going to get involved” in the inquiry, but really. So what?

The recent wildfires in California, the hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Houston and more remind us of the necessity of having an escape route from imminent danger along with packed bags of our most important papers. But in a nuclear attack… escape where? And will there be any one left to inspect our papers.

Anyone growing up in the 50’s and 60’s will remember Bert the Turtle and “Duck and Cover.” Many of us remember practicing in our classrooms hiding under desks while being shooed away from the windows. As if, now looking back on that, would it have mattered in the least? There was a day when the yellow and black nuclear fallout shelter signs adorned buildings on every block… today, I wouldn’t know where to even look for a shelter in my community.

Once again, a lot of media is focused on the ‘what happened,’ or the ‘how did it happen”? Both are important questions but fall short of the more important — so what do we do?

Absent the distraction of politics or personality in either Washington or Pyongyang, Sunday’s incident in Hawaii proves that we may have early warning detection systems… even notification protocols… but what is it the public is supposed to do to save itself?

And why isn’t that prominently included in today’s media coverage?

As an old assignment managing editor, I’m just asking…

Misplaced Priorities – More Engagement Is Not a Substitute for Content

The announcement that The New York Times and Washington Post will cooperate on a new platform to manager reader’s comments is no doubt a leap forward in building opinion sharing and engagement. I suggest the $3.9m price tag paid for with money from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation however, going to do very little to advance knowledge or – as it is promoted – advance innovative journalism.

Ask any one what they think and no doubt they will be happy to tell you whether they have expertise or not or first-hand knowledge. Talk radio demonstrates this hour after hour. We have become a nation of people who want to share opinions before the full scope of a story has been reported. Frank Bruni wrote this. “We no longer have news. We have springboards for commentary. We have cues for Tweets. Something happens, and before the facts are even settled, the morals are deduced and the lessons drawn. The story is absorbed into agendas. Everyone has a preferred take on it, a particular use for it. And as one person after another posits its real significance, the discussion travels so far from what set it in motion that the truth — the knowable, verifiable truth — is left in the dust.

Here’s the point – and no, this isn’ t a tome on the need to develop alternative funding models for contemporary journalism although that is a worthy subject for future consideration. The point is simple — once upon a time and not that long ago, major global media entities paid reporters to work and live all over the world in bureaus and to report on the news and business and politics and personalities and comings and goings that went on in those locales. That investment in human intelligence and resources paid dividends in the reportage, the understanding, the depth and context of what was happening. That investment helped to assure that there would be multiple reports – with differing views and yes, sometimes opinions, but it was all first-hand knowledge. That investment helped assure that individuals anywhere in the world could see and hear and read professionally acquired news. I embrace citizen journalism. I was among the very first to introduce it along with my colleague Mitch Ratcliffe in an ill-fated and under funded experiment called correspondents.org more long before it became ‘fashionable.’ But citizen journalism is not enough by itself. And asking for readers/viewers comments – even managing them superbly – is insufficient too.

So there goes almost $4m to build a platform to aggregate, manage and distribute the thoughts of the average man… the common Joe… the guy on the street who can’t wait to tell us what he thinks… but do I care? Do you? Really? Again quoting Frank Bruni, “Grandstanding is booming as traditional news gathering struggles to survive: It’s more easily summoned, more cheaply produced. It doesn’t require opening bureaus around the country or picking up correspondents’ travel expenses or paying them for weeks on end just to dig. So it fills publications, websites and television airtime the way noodles stretch out a casserole, until we’re looking at a media meal that’s almost all Hamburger Helper and no beef.”

We can bemoan this absence of beef but we’re not investing in making a difference.

The Vietnam war we lost, the lies we were told and the innocence we lost

There’s a new book about General William Westmoreland and the Vietnam war which, again, raises such serious questions about the lies we were told about the war, the progression of that war, its strategy and its failures.
Any one who remembers the “Five O’clock Follies” – the daily afternoon briefing of misinformation and manipulation of the media (and ultimately the public) by MAC-V (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) suspected at the time that the wolves were pulling the wool over the sheep’s eyes — but the military and government establishment did so with such gusto, bravado and the arrogance believing that they’d never be challenged, much less caught.
Almost a half century later we are still buffeted by the lingering effects of that war – the relationship between the military and the media has forever been changed, embeds don’t have the opportunity to report freely on what happens, and there seems to be a revisionist view among the public that any doubt or questioning is in some way unpatriotic. And that – the not-so-veiled-threat of any questioning or challenge as being akin to unpatriotic is the worst result of all.